My Gal Sunday Read online

  For several long moments Sunday felt so confused and disoriented that she almost had to remind herself of her own name. Where am I? she wondered, as her mind gradually woke up to the realization that something had gone terribly wrong. The immediate physical sensation was of being tied down. Her arms and legs hurt, but there was also a feeling of numbness. Something was holding her body rigid. She twisted slightly, and a mental image came to her of towels and sheets, stiffly flapping in the icy wind on the roof of her grandmother’s apartment building in New Jersey. Clothesline, she thought. The harsh, abrasive cords that were confining her felt like old-fashioned clothesline.

  Her head still felt groggy and strangely weighted, as though a boulder were pressing down on it. She forced her eyes open but could see nothing. She gasped slightly as she realized that something was covering her face and head, a thick, scratchy cloth of some kind that made her face itchy and warm.

  But the rest of her body was cold. Her arms were especially cold. She twisted slightly and realized that she wasn’t wearing her jacket. The twisting also made her realize that her right arm was hurting from where the cord was digging into the bruise she had gotten when she fell off Appleby.

  Sunday did a quick assessment of her situation: Okay, so I have a piece of burlap or canvas or something over my head, and I am trussed up like a Christmas turkey, she thought. And I am in a cold room somewhere. But where? And what happened? She didn’t remember anything. Had there been an accident? Was she in an operating room, confined on the table, waking up in surgery?

  Then she remembered: something had happened in the car.

  That was it! Something had happened in the car. But what?

  She forced herself to try to remember, to calmly go over the events of the day. The House had adjourned at three o’clock. Art and Leo had been waiting for her as they always did, in the area off the cloakroom. She had not gone back to her office as she usually did, because there was a reception at the French embassy that she had to attend and she needed to get home to change for it. So they had gotten in the car and headed across town. Then what?

  Sunday tried to force back the moan that she could feel escaping her lips. She’d always prided herself on not being a crybaby. Irrationally she thought back on the time when she was nine years old and had been swinging from a bar in the school yard and had slipped. She had seen the ground rushing up toward her before her forehead had smashed against the pebbled concrete. She hadn’t cried then. And she wouldn’t cry now. Although then there had been some boys standing around who had seen her fall, so she couldn’t cry in front of them, and now she was alone.

  No, don’t give in, she admonished herself. Think; just think. When had the accident happened? She mentally retraced the steps they had taken. Art had opened the back door of the car for her and waited until she was inside. He’d then slipped in beside Leo, who sat behind the steering wheel. She had waved to Larry and Bill, who were waiting in the follow-up car behind them.

  The snow had stopped falling, but the streets were still messy and treacherous. They had passed a couple of fender benders. Despite the hour, it was dark outside, and she had turned on the backseat reading light and had been studying the notes she had taken during the Speaker’s speech earlier that day, and then there had been a loud noise, like a muffled explosion. Yes, that was it, an explosion!

  And she had looked up. She remembered that they had been passing the Kennedy Center and were almost to Watergate. Art’s face. She remembered that he had been looking back at her, then past her, out the back window at the follow-up car. He had shouted, “Step on it, Leo!” But then his voice had faded. Sunday couldn’t remember if he had stopped shouting or if it had been she who had stopped hearing, because she remembered feeling weak suddenly.

  Yes, she remembered trying to sit up because the car was slowing to a stop. And then the driver’s-side door had opened. And that was all she remembered.

  It was enough, though, to make her understand that she wasn’t in a hospital. Because there hadn’t been an accident. No, obviously this had happened on purpose. She had been kidnapped.

  But who had done it? And why?

  Wherever she was, it was damp and chilly. The cloth over her head was so disorienting. She shook her head, trying to clear it slightly. Whatever the kidnappers had used to knock her out was wearing off, but its residue was leaving her with a powerful headache. What she did know was that she was securely tied down to what felt to be a wooden chair. Was she alone? She couldn’t be sure. She sensed that someone was nearby, perhaps even watching her.

  She thought suddenly of the Secret Service guys, Art and Leo. Were they there too? If not, what had happened to them? She knew that they would have done anything to protect her. Please, God, don’t let them have been murdered, she said in silent prayer.

  Henry! She knew he must be frantic. Or does he even know yet that I am missing? How long has it been? For all she knew, it could have been anything from a few minutes to several days since she had been kidnapped. And why has this happened? What benefit can someone get by kidnapping me? If it was money, then she knew that Henry would pay whatever it would take. Somehow, though, she sensed that this wasn’t about money at all.

  Sunday’s throat closed. There was someone there, in the room, with her. She could hear faint breathing, coming closer. Someone was bending over her. Thick, insistent fingers were tracing the contours of her face through the heavy fabric, caressing her neck, reaching up into her hair.

  A low, hoarse voice she had to strain to hear whispered, “They’re all looking for you. Just like I knew they would. Your husband. The president. The Secret Service. By now they are sniffing all over. But they’re like blind mice. Yes, like three blind mice. And they won’t find you. At least not until the tide comes in, and by then it won’t matter.”

  Henry did not speak on the flight to Washington. He sat alone in the private compartment of the plane, forcing his mind to focus on what was known about Sunday’s kidnapping and on what could be deduced from it. He had to distance himself from the emotional turmoil he felt inwardly and make his mind analyze the situation as he had analyzed dozens of intensely critical situations during his time in the White House. He had to be guided by reason, not simply galvanized by emotion. He had to be like a surgeon, analytical and clearheaded.

  But then, in a surge of misery, Henry reminded himself that except in cases of dire emergency, no surgeon would ever operate on his own wife, for fear that his emotions would cloud his judgment.

  A scrap of poetry ran through his mind: “These mortal hands because of love have lain like music on your throat. But the music of the soul is delicate, remote . . .” He had no idea of the source of the line but knew that for some reason, at this moment, it was pertinent.

  He thought of Sunday, of how easily she fell asleep, while he liked to read, sometimes for hours, after going to bed. Occasionally she would doze off while he was reading to her, or perhaps critiquing out loud something he found especially wrongheaded in one of the many newspapers he read daily.

  He remembered that just last Sunday night he had wanted to share something with her but realized that she had fallen asleep. Still, he had brushed her neck with his fingers, hoping she wasn’t so deeply asleep that she wouldn’t wake up to listen.

  She had sighed, and in her sleep had turned away from him, her hands pillowing her face, her blond hair spread around her. She had looked so lovely, he had just sat and watched her for at least half an hour, mesmerized.

  They had had an early breakfast the next morning before she flew back to Washington. Henry reflected on how he had teased her about rejecting him. She had laughed and said that she had always been a sound sleeper, and that was because she had such a clear conscience. So what was his problem? she had asked with a sly smile.

  And he had replied that it was all her fault, that he was so crazy about her that sleeping when he was with her seemed like a waste of time. And she had smiled and said, “Don’t worry, we hav
e all the time in the world.”

  He shook his head, struck by the irony of her words. Oh, Sunday, will I ever see you again? he thought, giving in to a rare moment of emotional weakness.

  Stop it! he admonished himself. You won’t get her back by wasting your time. He pressed the buzzer on his arm-rest. In a matter of seconds, Marvin and Jack were seated opposite him.

  He had wanted to leave Marvin Klein in New Jersey, just in case there was any direct contact from the kidnappers, but Marvin had begged to come and Henry had relented. “I have to be with you, sir,” Marvin had argued. “Sims will monitor the phones here. He’ll keep a line open to us.”

  Sims, the butler at Drumdoe since Henry’s tenth birthday, thirty-four years ago, had said, “You know you can rely on me, sir.” He had spoken with his usual calm, even though tears had glinted in his eyes. Henry knew the fondness Sims felt for Sunday.

  Now he realized he was glad that he had brought Marvin with him. He had just the kind of analytical, clearheaded approach to problems that Henry so needed at the moment. It was the very trait that, when Henry had been elected to the Senate nearly fifteen years ago, had caused him to elevate the young man from the rank of volunteer.

  Without waiting to be asked, Klein said, “No more contact, sir. The operator at the Treasury who took the call was smart enough to go straight to the top, so word of the kidnapping has been contained. So far there has been no hint of a leak.”

  Jack Collins, Henry’s senior Secret Service agent, could have passed for a linebacker on a pro football team. He was a disciplined solid wall of a man, but he too had a definite soft spot when it came to Sunday. The underlying anger and indignation was apparent in his voice when he briefed Henry on what they knew of events so far.

  “No one saw the actual kidnapping, sir. Apparently Sunday’s . . . I mean Mrs. Britland’s car and the follow-up car had somehow been rigged with an explosive device attached to a canister of nerve gas of some sort. It may well have been detonated by remote control, given how quickly the kidnappers were on the scene. Despite the hour, there appear to have been no witnesses, but then the snow had caused a lot of offices and businesses to close early, so traffic was light.”

  “Do they think that Sunday was injured by the explosion?” Henry asked.

  “No, they believe that she, like Art and Leo, the agents who were with her today, was knocked unconscious by the gas, but that the actual explosion was not so large. All that happened to the cars was that they slowed to a stop when the device went off, and the gas apparently immobilized everyone immediately. When our guys regained consciousness, they both could remember only feeling dizzy and then blacking out.”

  “But how did anyone get to the car in the first place, to plant the gas bomb? Isn’t it kept in a safe place?” Henry demanded.

  “We’re not one hundred percent sure yet, sir. It wasn’t a very sophisticated device — actually more like the kind of thing anyone could rig up with a few items from Radio Shack. The gas, of course, is another matter. They are still analyzing that, so we don’t know yet where that could have come from. The devices were undoubtedly slipped under the cars when they were parked in the secured parking lot at the Capitol; a simple magnet held each one in place.”

  “And nobody saw it happen?” Henry asked.

  “So far we have come up with no witnesses. They’ve learned that a guard’s apartment was burglarized and his uniform stolen. Part of the problem may be that Mrs. Britland’s car itself is so nondescript that it attracted no attention, and it did take right off,” the agent said. “Anyone who was around was concentrating on the follow-up car with the two unconscious agents in it.”

  Henry already knew that Sunday’s car with the other unconscious agents in it had been found near the Lincoln Memorial. Of course, he told himself bitterly, no one would pay much attention to a car that looked as though it had been bought at a repo sale of low-to mid-priced vehicles. His little joke. Forget the limos, he had said. They attract too much attention. No, for Sunday he had had them fix up a state-of-the-art vehicle disguised as “the family car.”

  My little pretensions, he thought. My little games. Clever, right? Wrong. If Sunday had been in a limo, surely it would have attracted some attention, sitting at the side of the road.

  Although the truth was, he knew, that Sunday loved having that kind of car. She would have refused to ever show up at her parents’ home in a limousine. Henry realized with a start that in his rush he had failed to contact Sunday’s mother and father. I have to do that soon, he decided. They have to know, and they should hear it from me. “Get Sunday’s parents on the phone,” he told Klein.

  It was the most difficult call he’d ever made, but when he hung up after speaking to both of them, the thought that filled his mind was that it was obvious where Sunday got her backbone.

  The phone rang, its abrupt sound breaking his reverie. Henry waved aside Marvin’s outstretched hand and picked up the receiver himself. It was Desmond Ogilvey; he got straight to the point. “Henry, I’m sorry. Whoever kidnaped Sunday has called CBS. Dan Rather just requested confirmation. He has every detail down exactly, so we know this is the real thing. We’ve asked him to hold the story for the time being, and he has agreed. But he warned that if there is a leak anywhere else, they will run with it.”

  “If the kidnapper called Dan Rather, he wants publicity,” Henry snapped.

  “No, not according to what he told Rather. He said that he was ’testing the integrity of the media,’ whatever that means.”

  “How long ago did the call come in?”

  “I’d say less than ten minutes ago. I called you immediately after getting off the phone with Rather. Where are you?”

  “Just about to descend into National.”

  “Well, come directly here. We’ve got a police escort waiting.”

  Twenty minutes later, still accompanied by Marvin Klein and Jack Collins, Henry was at the door of the Oval Office. Des Ogilvey was seated at his desk, the presidential seal on the wall behind him. The secretary of the treasury, the attorney general, and the heads of the FBI and the CIA sat in a semicircle around the president. They all jumped to their feet when Henry came in.

  It was twenty past six. “There’s been another communication, Henry,” the president said. “Apparently the kidnappers enjoy toying with us. They called Rather back and said they had decided they wanted him to air their demands. They furnished proof of their sincerity.”

  For an instant he glanced away from Henry. Then looking directly into his eyes, he said, “Sunday’s wallet and a lock of her hair in a sealed plastic envelope were left on the Delta ticket counter at National.” Desmond Ogilvey’s tone lowered. “Henry, the hair in the envelope was soaked in seawater.”

  * * *

  When Sunday felt the hood being lifted off her head, she had first taken a deep breath and then opened her eyes, hoping to get a good look at her captor. The room was dimly lit, however, and she had trouble making out much of anything. He was wearing a monastic type robe with a hood that fell forward, obscuring much of his face.

  He removed the ropes that had held her to the chair. Then, leaving her feet still tied loosely together, he pulled her up to a standing position. Her boots were off, and the concrete floor felt cold to her feet. He was three or four inches taller than she, Sunday noticed. That would make him about six feet. His dark gray eyes, narrow and sunken, had a crafty, malevolent expression, the more frightening because they burned with intelligence. She could feel the strength in his hands and arms as he turned her and said, “I assume you would like to use the facilities.”

  As she stumbled forward, she struggled mentally to assess her situation. Clearly she was in a basement of some kind. It was desperately cold and filled with the kind of dank smell that airless, sunless basements seem to acquire and retain. The floor was cracked, uneven concrete. The only furniture other than the chair was a portable television set, the rabbit-ear antenna angling from the top.

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bsp; He held her arm firmly as he led her across the dark room. Sunday winced when a particularly sharp edge of broken cement pierced the sole of her foot. He guided her into a narrow vestibule that led to a staircase; they stopped at a cubicle behind it. The door was open, and inside she could see a toilet and sink.

  “You can have your privacy, but don’t try anything,” he said. “I’ll be right outside, holding the door. I searched you, of course, when I brought you in here. I know that women sometimes conceal a weapon or even Mace on their person.”

  “I’m not carrying anything,” she told him.

  “Oh, I know that,” he said, his tone even. “Maybe you haven’t noticed yet that I’ve relieved you of your jewelry. I must tell you I’m rather surprised that except for a solid gold wedding band, your jewelry is remarkably unexceptional. I would have thought our wealthy former president would have been more generous with his lovely young wife.”

  Sunday thought fleetingly of the generations of Britland family gems that were now hers. “Neither my husband nor I believe in ostentation or in conspicuous consumption,” she replied, encouraged to realize that, beyond cramped limbs and the heartsick worry over Henry and what he must be going through, her temper was steadily rising.

  Alone in the tiny lavatory, she splashed water on her face. The hot-water spigot yielded only a sputtering spray, but she was grateful to feel it against her skin. A single bulb that dangled from the ceiling — it couldn’t be more than twenty-five watts, she thought — gave just enough glow for her to see in the peeling, film-covered mirror over the sink just how pale and disheveled she was. She had started to turn away when she realized that there was something else, something different about her. What was it?

  She stared at her reflection for a few seconds before she realized that a clump of hair had been clumsily cut from the left side of her head, leaving a hole in what had been a very neat trim.

  Why did he cut my hair? she wondered.

  A chill that had nothing to do with the icy temperature in her basement prison hit the pit of Sunday’s stomach. There was something decidedly alien about her captor. He seemed almost like a robot, programmed to carry out precise, inexorable instructions. A robot but self-programmed. He doesn’t take orders from anyone. Who was he, and what did he hope to gain from doing this?